Details

Updated kernel packages that fix one security issue and three bugs are nowavailable for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderatesecurity impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score,which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the CVE link inthe References section.

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linuxoperating system.

* It was found that the Xen hypervisor did not always lock'page_alloc_lock' and 'grant_table.lock' in the same order. This couldpotentially lead to a deadlock. A malicious guest administrator could usethis flaw to cause a denial of service on the host. (CVE-2013-4494,Moderate)

Red Hat would like to thank the Xen project for reporting this issue.

This update also fixes the following bugs:

* A recent patch to the CIFS code that introduced the NTLMSSP (NT LAN Manager Security Support Provider) authentication mechanism causeda regression in CIFS behavior. As a result of the regression, an encryptionkey that is returned during the SMB negotiation protocol response was onlyused for the first session that was created on the SMB client. Anysubsequent mounts to the same server did not use the encryption keyreturned by the initial negotiation with the server. As a consequence, itwas impossible to mount multiple SMB shares with different credentials tothe same server. A patch has been applied to correct this problem so thatan encryption key or a server challenge is now provided for every SMBsession during the SMB negotiation protocol response. (BZ#1029865)

* The igb driver previously used a 16-bit mask when writing values of theflow control high-water mark to hardware registers on a network device.Consequently, the values were truncated on some network devices, disruptingthe flow control. A patch has been applied to the igb driver so that it nowuses a 32-bit mask as expected. (BZ#1041694)

* The IPMI driver did not properly handle kernel panic messages.Consequently, when a kernel panic occurred on a system that was utilizingIPMI without Kdump being set up, a second kernel panic could be triggered.A patch has been applied to the IPMI driver to fix this problem, and amessage handler now properly waits for a response to panic event messages.(BZ#1049731)

All kernel users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, whichcontain backported patches to correct these issues. The system must berebooted for this update to take effect.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure all previously released erratarelevant to your system have been applied.

To install kernel packages manually, use "rpm -ivh [package]". Do not use"rpm -Uvh" as that will remove the running kernel binaries from yoursystem. You may use "rpm -e" to remove old kernels after determining thatthe new kernel functions properly on your system.